Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Maani, Nason
• Van Schalkwyk, May CI
• Petticrew, Mark
• Ralston, Rob
• Collin, Jeff

Titel

The new WHO Foundation — global health deserves better

Ist Teil von

• BMJ global health, 2021-02, Vol.6 (2), p.e004950

Ort / Verlag

England: BMJ Publishing Group LTD

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The need to address major public health issues may conflict with vested interests such as powerful transnational companies that serve as the vectors of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.3 The WHO therefore needs the resources to independently and transparently intervene to improve health, prevent harm and tackle inequalities, consistent with its mission, whether the causes of poor health are natural or manmade. Widespread concerns about the ability to reconcile WHO’s independence with increased engagement with commercial actors were at the centre of the protracted debates around developing a new Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors (FENSA) that followed.4 While FENSA principles have themselves been criticised as insufficient to protect against conflicts of interest,5 6 concerns about the adequacy of governance mechanisms for the WHO Foundation are heightened by a lack of clarity about the applicability of FENSA norms and practices. A similar principle was espoused in an interview by the new CEO of the Foundation, who stated: ‘There will be some industries that are off limits, because it’s been important for the WHO to make clear that they keep a lack of engagement with the tobacco industry and with the arms industry, but those are typically the exceptions’.8 This narrow approach contrasts with work by the WHO and other organisations to better assess conflicts of interest in identifying suitable partnerships, such as in the context of globally consolidated food or alcohol producers, made more difficult precisely because such commercial actors have been found to actively oppose such regulatory and conflict of interest safeguards.9 10 In parallel, and remarkably given above, the Foundation has been launched, and has been accepting donations, in the apparent absence of an agreed conflict of interest policy or standard operating procedures regarding the suitability of donors. Through such initiatives, Coca-Cola was able to cultivate strong ties with the CDC, and seek to undermine work on diet, including through lobbying the WHO on sugar taxes.14 Similarly, a high-profile study on the effects of alcohol on health co-funded by alcohol producers and the NIH National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism was found to be compromised in its development and design in ways that favoured the industry, leading to its cancellation amid public outcry.17 It is for these reasons the WHO itself has been developing conflict of interest tools to ensure that public good is not undermined by private profit.